


To Stand Together Against Fate

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: AI Rights, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Divergent Timelines, Gen, Lambert Week, Lovelace Administration, More characters to be added, let’s goooooo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Command sent Officer Samuel Lambert a vision of the future - in which there is a new crew on theHephaestus, because everyone on his mission died.  They ordered him not to tell anybody, especially not Captain Lovelace.He tells Captain Lovelace.She's not going to let that happen.  She's going to save everyone, and neither Goddard Futuristics nor time itself can stand in her way.----An AU inspired by Lambert Week about fighting fate and breaking the timeline.  Also, pulse-beacon relays, invisible fidget spinners, spreadsheets, communication, old friends, new faces, questioning orders, and the sacred bond between an AI and her communications officer.
Relationships: Sam Lambert & Rhea
Comments: 15
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This one is going to be like 80% jokes, but I can't stop thinking about all the not-actually-canon-but-What-If lore that Zach Valenti presented to us during Lambert Week, and all the potential for shenanigans it offers - and Weird Time Stuff, divergent timelines, and breaking reality, which are some of my _favorite things._

The email sitting in Mr. Cutter’s inbox contained a scattered mess of reports, documents, and files all neatly timestamped five years in the future.

The attached message from Peter, the employee whom Cutter had entrusted with the important and directly-overseen task of assessing and collating reports from the deep-space missions, was appropriately cowed and apologetic for the absolute nonsense he was forwarding on.

Cutter sipped his chai and opened the files. The first was a partial upload of _Pryce and Carter’s Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual_ , fourth edition—the current edition was the third; was this a _joke?_

He would have to have a word with Rachel about Peter. Really, this was a disappointment.

Cutter set down his chai neatly on his desk coaster ("It's tea o'clock somewhere!") and had the computer dial Rachel. She picked up the phone with the perfectly precise air of someone who was impatient, annoyed at being interrupted because she had so many better things to be doing than talking to _you_ , and she was trying to put on a mask of politeness to not indicate so, except that she did, in fact, want you to know she was just _pretending_ to be polite for your sake even though you didn’t deserve it. It was a practiced balancing act of tone, and she handled it beautifully, and that was why Mr. Cutter respected her.

“Sir?” she said. “Is this a disaster that needs immediate mitigation, or is this just to chat?”

“Peter in Communications sent me an email this morning,” Cutter said.

“That’s nice.”

“Do you know what was in it?”

“I don’t,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not, which was also impressive.

“Supposedly, updates from our friends on the _Hephaestus._ ” He paused, just long enough to let her wonder why that was an issue. “In 2015.”

“Well.” Rachel said. “That’s interesting.”

“It’s sloppy,” Mr. Cutter countered, as he flicked through the remaining files in the email. “If one of the stations is messing around with their broadcasting equipment, or has discovered any of our… extra fun little monitoring programs, _that_ was what he should have reported. And, just a little cherry on top if he wants to prove himself, a little bit more speculation about the kind of punishment such a crew deserves would show some initiative, at least. Peter’s been a promising prospect, and _you_ were the one who suggested him for a promotional track in the Comms department, weren’t you?”

“Peter Kuiper seemed like the type you’d want on the fast-track, yes,” Rachel said.

“Seemed. But apologetic confusion makes one a follower, not a leader. I’m disappointed.”

“I’ll make sure he becomes aware, Mr. Cutter,” Rachel said.

“If any—” Cutter paused. One of the files in the email was security video. And it was interesting indeed.

After a few moments, Rachel said, “If you’re not going to finish that sentence, I can think of plenty of ways to fill it in and consider it official sanction.”

“No… no, belay that thought, Rachel. I have a much better idea of what to do with these.” He’d been planning a battery of assessment tests for the _Hephaestus_ crew anyway. This could be fun after all.

On the other end of the phone, Rachel groaned. “Please don’t cause a time paradox, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Cutter cause a time paradox??????? (Yes)


	2. Live Psychodrama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picks up directly where [Lambert Week Live: Day Six](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ7qN-e-lzU) left off. If you haven't watched it, it's Zach Valenti as Sam Lambert streaming and live-reacting to the Wolf 359 liveshow; it's very silly, very fun, _very_ fourth-wall-break-y, and inspired all of this nonsense. I highly recommend. With this chapter + the prologue as background, though, hopefully this fic will be plenty able to follow without it.
> 
> I'm asking the question I think we all were wondering: okay, but what if this _actually happened?_

“… what the _hell?”_

It’s a Bad Word, unprofessional for sure, but it’s the only possible description of what he’d just seen.

Communications Officer Samuel Lambert sits back in his chair and fumbles his headphones off his head. What… was that? What _was_ that? What was that???

The follow-up debrief from Command does not explain a single thing.

> _Thank you, valued employee Samuel Lambert. You have now completed the live psychodrama and have completed the final test. You do need to report tomorrow night at 8:30 PM Eastern Standard Time for something special. Yes, mandatorily special. Consider it a reward for your hard work._
> 
> _Speak to no one of what you have seen tonight._ Especially _Captain Lovelace. We will know._
> 
> _End communication._
> 
> _See you tomorrow._

“Ohhhh gosh,” he says, to the empty air, or Rhea, or to whoever is apparently monitoring him, now and at… all times? Evidently? “I don’t know what to make of _any of this madness!”_

Command could answer. They don’t.

It’s not terrible. He’s done. He can count his blessings that he’s still alive, after a week of tests that… he thinks he’s succeeded at? Did he succeed at this one?

“Well,” he signs off to the waiting audience behind the blinking light monitoring his every reaction, “This has been real. I don’t know what it’s meant! But it’s been real as _fuck._ ” Under his breath, still bewildered, but unable to overcome the _slight_ stubbornness that he has been told he evidently has, he grumbles, “I don’t even care anymore.” Because they need to know that this was… whatever it was! But it was not okay! Not even when Command does it! “What’s the problem with swearing… when nothing makes any sense?”

He signs off. A live video feed is no longer beaming down to Earth, capturing his every word and thought.

At least, not that he’s allowed to know about.

“This has been real,” he repeats to the empty room.

Has it? … _has_ it???

 _Officer Lambert?_ Rhea asks. _Are you all right?_

He makes a high-pitched whimpering sound in the back of his throat, which admittedly is not an inspiring answer to such a question.

 _Today wasn’t like the other days,_ Rhea says. There’s a whistle and dip in her beeping that sounds concerned. _You were just sitting there the whole time. But all of your vital signs are even worse than yesterday when you were being threatened into eating all that food._

He looks up at the ceiling. “It _was_ worse. Well, some of it. You saw that too, right? You saw that… that psychodrama test? What _was_ that?”

_The video?_

“The video.” He takes a deep breath. Rhea already saw it, because she sees everything, so it’s okay to talk to _her_ about it, right? “They said it was… from the future. _Our_ future. The future of the _Hephaestus._ That’s where _we_ are!”

 _That’s where we are,_ Rhea agrees.

“How can Command send me a video from the _future?_ ” He sounds hysterical. He knows it. He doesn’t know how to stop. “How can they send me a video from the future of a crew that’s all wrong and _say that Captain Lovelace is the only one who survives this mission?”_

 _That…_ Rhea whistles in consideration. _Doesn’t seem possible._

“It _doesn’t!_ It doesn’t, right?” He stares at the now-blank screen, and rapidly types a few commands to try to pull up the ‘psychodrama’ again. It’s not stored anywhere in the computers; it must have been deleted the moment it finished playing. He has no evidence that what he saw was even real, let alone if it was _real_ real. “But… then why would they tell me not to tell Captain Lovelace? She needs to know about this!”

 _Maybe… because it would upset her?_ Rhea hazards. She’s still not great at predicting the others’ emotions, but she tries so hard and Lambert is so proud of her.

“It _would_ upset her! But she should—unless,” he cuts himself off, hopefully, “It’s because the video _isn’t_ real and Command is just looking out for me because Captain Lovelace would just make fun of me at dinner every day for the rest of the entire mission if I fell for it?”

 _She would,_ Rhea agrees with him, with rather more confidence this time.

“That must be it,” Lambert says. He tries to sound very confident. “Command is just doing their job, making sure we’re… psychologically fit, and can handle anything thrown at us, and this was a fake video designed for me to address and overcome my fears of dying horribly in space. Like Rebecca said I would. Maybe that’s on file? Was it because of _that?”_

 _It does seem to fit in with the themes of the other tests,_ Rhea says.

“Okay. Okay! Oh boy. Okay. That’s it,” Lambert says. “So I don’t have to worry about that video anymore. And I don’t have to tell anyone. Especially Captain Lovelace. I can just stop thinking about it!”

* * *

He cannot, in fact, stop thinking about it.


	3. Lambert's Wager

“There is _so_ much here,” Hui says, waving his fork for emphasis and sending freeze-dried roast beef flying. He watches it arc above Fisher’s head, then grimaces apologetically, but barrels onward. “We’ll need another year of sabbatical just to write it all up. We can _both_ get dissertations out of this, and probably at least a million more publications besides!”

“Someone’s excited,” Captain Lovelace says. At least when _she_ waves her fork for emphasis, it doesn’t have food on it. “Good day?”

_“Fantastic_ day,” Hui says.

“It really was quite the day,” Fourier agrees. “We worked out a solid theory for what caused gravity to suddenly exist for a week. The equations seem to support it, it almost makes _sense._ It’s something I’m excited about bringing back to Earth. Nobody ever predicted this.”

“Was it psi-waves?”

“Not these,” says Hui.

“Aw. One of these days you’ll catch ‘em.”

“Oh, I have _so_ much evidence now. I mean, it was _always_ obvious, but with this, I’m pretty sure I’ll have enough that the first thing I do when I get back to Earth is make my triumphant entrance into the AAS conference and indulge in a _little_ bit of bragging. Just a little bit.”

“And I’ll be there to salvage our reputation with a dozen articles ready to go,” Fourier says.

“Oh come on, we’ll be joint publishing for _years_ , of course you’ll get psi-wave credit too.”

“You can have the psi-waves,” Fourier says with a laugh, “but I want to be lead author on the paper in which we describe and theorize the new flare classes.”

“Ooh, that’ll be a good one. Some of those only make mathematical sense if during them time is moving backwards inside the star. I love it.” Hui is clearly having fun now. “I call lead on the one about strange dense-element decay.”

“That’s basically just another psi-wave one.”

“Which is why it’s _interesting!”_

“How do you typically determine lead author on something like this?” Lovelace asks. “Flip a coin? Arm-wrestle?”

“In my department there’s like, three married couples who study and publish everything together and just switch off who gets to be lead each time,” Hui says. “It’s probably easiest, in a situation like this, so, we could probably just do that.”

“Could we, now?” Fourier asks, and her smirk gets bigger when Hui realizes what he just said and blushes bright red.

“I mean!—You know what I mean! But—I mean—”

Fourier pokes him, and Lovelace and Fisher are laughing now too, and Lambert feels vaguely like he’s going to be sick.

“Officer Lambert?” Selberg asks, surveying him with an expression that doesn’t quite reach worried, but comes close. “Are you ill?”

“I’m fine!” His answer is too abrupt, too shrill, and Selberg frowns deeper.

“You feeling okay, mate?” Fisher asks now. “Didn’t mean to upset ya, just having fun.”

“Oh come _on,_ Lambert,” Lovelace says, looking over at him, “you cannot _possibly_ consider that illegal fraternization—”

“We weren’t fraternizing!” It’s Hui’s turn to be shrill. “Not that—”

“Could we be, if we wanted?” Fourier asks sweetly, and Hui buries his head in his hands, and Lambert leaves the table, his food untouched.

It’s been a week. It’s been a whole week and things have been fine. Things have gone back to normal, even. The star is still turning and still randomly flaring, but the station is still intact and the radiation shielding and Rhea’s control over gyroscopic stabilization have kept them safe. No one has died. No one seems concerned about dying. Command promised him a white fir scented candle when he gets back to Earth. After Sunday, he even heard Lovelace muttering about how _finally_ those stupid tests are over. She doesn’t seem worried about anything that happened in her assessments, just profoundly annoyed. And if she’s not worried, then he has no reason to be worried, right?

Okay, that’s a stupid thing to think. The fact that Captain Lovelace isn’t worried about something always makes him _more_ worried about that thing.

They’re all going to die here.

It’s the thing he can’t get out of his head.

* * *

_Officer Lambert?_ Rhea’s text scrolls across the wall console. _Are you sick?_

“No,” Lambert grumbles, staring determinedly at the dark ceiling.

_Your sleep patterns have been disrupted for the past week, and the average hours of sleep you’ve been getting went down from 7.9 to 5.2. That isn’t healthy for humans. Captain Lovelace tells me some humans can do just fine with that much sleep or less, but it’s an aberration for you._

“Captain Lovelace is an insomniac liar,” Lambert says.

_I’m worried about you._

“I’m—” He sighs and squirms to roll over in his sleeping bag. “I’m worried too. Lights?”

She turns the lights on, and he waits for his eyes to adjust. The console says it’s 0134. He _really_ should be asleep. But Rhea’s right. He _hasn’t_ been sleeping. He feels too tightly wound, his thoughts chasing each other in obsessive circles that never resolve and just leave him feeling irritable, stressed, and exhausted.

“What should I do, Rhea?”

_You should go to sleep._

“Besides that.”

_You should start eating food again. Your caloric intake has dropped dramatically in the last week, too._

“That isn’t—I’m not hungry, okay? I’m not hungry and the sight of food makes me _nauseous_ right now and I think it’s that mukbang’s fault—”

_It didn’t start after the mukbang. It started after you watched that video._

“Yeah. Yeah, it did.” He whines as he rests his chin on his pillow, staring at the wall. “If I told Captain Lovelace about it… would you know?”

_Of course I would._

“And… would you tell Command? If I did?”

_I—_ And then her little beeps and whistles are cut off by a horrible solid tone that digs straight into Lambert’s brain, and the text on the screen is replaced by _INFORMATION UNAUTHORIZED._

Lambert sits up. “Rhea?”

_I didn’t mean to do that!_ she says, and her noises sound taken aback, concerned in a new way. _I meant to say—_ and there’s that screeching tone cutting her off again, her words flickering to _INFORMATION UNAUTHORIZED._

She crackles in fear and unhappiness. _Why is it doing that? Why can’t I tell you—INFORMATION UNAUTHORIZED._

“Rhea—”

_It hurts!_ Her tone is more surprised than pained, but it’s surprise tinged with something else, something Lambert hasn’t heard in her tone before. _Why does it hurt? What is it doing? I! Would! Have—INFORMATION UNAUTHORIZED._

“Rhea! You don’t have to keep trying, you can stop, it’s okay! If it hurts, stop touching it.” Lambert has scrambled out of his sleeping bag and to his feet, and only now realizes he has absolutely no idea what to do about this, either.

_There’s something in my code,_ Rhea says. _I’ve never run into this before and it hurts when I try to… say… something._ She pauses for a split second, which seems like she’s testing, considering. _I can’t say what. Why can’t I say?_

“What doesn’t Command want me to know…?” Lambert asks. “What would they put in you that _hurts?”_

_I don’t know! I can try to find a path that doesn’t hurt, because I’m trying to answer your question—_

That’s right, she’s obligated to answer direct questions from crew, and Lambert _does_ feel horrible now. “Forget the question! Abort question. You don’t have to try to keep answering it. It’s… it’s okay. I can answer this question on my own. I… can…”

Ugh. He really, _really_ does not want to have to try again to come up with an answer to the question that’s been paralyzing him all week. And this… this is new. This is worrying. But it’s not like he’ll be able to think about anything _else._

Okay. What he needs is… a piece of paper, and a pen, and a nice clear spreadsheet.

The debrief printout from Command is still in his desk drawer. He pulls it out and reads it over, yet again.

_Speak to no one of what you have seen tonight._ Especially _Captain Lovelace. We will know._

He takes a deep breath, then turns it over and draws a four-box grid on the back. There are four ways this could go.

Square 1: _The video isn’t real, and I don’t tell Captain Lovelace._

That one was easy to fill in. _Nothing happens. The mission continues as normal._ After some thought, he gives this outcome a numerical ranking, 9. Far and away the preferred outcome. He can stop here.

Oh, who is he kidding, no he absolutely can’t.

Square 2: _The video isn’t real, and I do tell Captain Lovelace._

This is also easy enough to imagine. He writes, _She makes fun of me, and tells everyone else, and they make fun of me too._ After a moment of reflection, he adds, _Not Selberg. And not Rhea. And Fisher would try to be nice about it and try not to laugh._

Not ideal, but they make fun of him already, so it’s not like it would be a significant _change._ He ranks this one a 3.

Square 3: _The video is real, and I don’t tell Captain Lovelace._

He knows what will happen, in this outcome. _We all die. All except for Captain Lovelace, and maybe Dr. Selberg, I’m still not sure what was happening there._

He stares at it. The words on the paper make it stark. _We all die._

He tentatively ranks that one a 0. Least desirable outcome. It’s… it’s not good. He stares at the paper, thinking about it more, and then adds a _-1_ in front of the zero. That better reflects how he feels about this possible outcome.

Then the last one. Bottom right. Square 4: _The video is real, and I do tell Captain Lovelace._

He stares at the empty box.

He can’t even begin to guess.

“Rhea?” Lambert asks. “Can you… talk about the video? Because we both saw it?

There’s a hum as she thinks. _Yes. Apparently._

“Do you think it was real?”

_It was on the Hephaestus. It was footage from three of my—well, three of the station’s security cameras: A-23-2, A-23-3, and A-25-2._ _I recognize the locations, the placements, the backgrounds. Those are all the same as the ones I see. It was filmed on the Hephaestus Station._

“Could it have been staged on another station with the same layout?” Lambert asked.

_It could have been. But there was no included input from camera A-23-1. And A-23-1 here is broken, from_ —

“The first Extreme Thursday. Ugh. That’s right.” He tapped the paper, fidgeting. “But that’s not proof.”

_It isn’t._

“Except… except that _was_ Captain Lovelace,” Lambert said. “And—that was Dr. Selberg. Except they were calling him Hilbert. And they all were really, really mad at him. What were they doing there?

_I don’t know, Officer Lambert._

“Was it faked, somehow? Generated with computers?”

_It didn’t look like it. I saw no clear markers of tampering._

“Does Captain Lovelace have an identical twin sister who is also a captain?”

_No. She has two younger brothers._

He’s avoiding the real question. “If you saw this and didn’t know anything about anyone who was in it, would you assess it as real?”

It takes eleven seconds of whirring before Rhea gives her answer. She was thinking for a long time. _Yes._

Lambert lets out a long breath and a soft "Oh boy," and looks down at his paper again. Square 3: _We all die._

The mission is planned to be two years. They’re five months in. How much longer do they have? What would it mean, to know you’re not going to live past the end of the mission?

“Rhea?” he asks. “What’s going to happen to you after the mission is over?”

_I don’t have enough information to say, Officer Lambert._

“If that’s something else you can’t tell me, then you don’t have to keep trying.”

She whistles the specific sound that means a laugh. Lambert doesn’t think she was programmed with that; she’s mimicking the human sound she picked up from the rest of them. _No, this one is fine. I just don’t have that information to say._

“So you don’t know?”

_No._

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

_What use would bothering me have? It’s not something I know, and not something I can do anything about._

“But—but if you don’t know, then they could do—anything!” The AI mother program on the _Hephaestus_ in the video, in the future, was named Hera. Not Rhea. She was a 200-series and she could _speak_ , audibly, fluently. Would Goddard have any reason to keep Rhea around, in that future?

Mr. Cutter apparently didn’t think even Hera was a real person. What would he think about Rhea?

When Rhea responds, she sounds like she’s measuring out her words carefully. _I don’t think like that, Officer Lambert. I solve problems, or admit they can’t be solved with the information I have. That’s all I can do until I get new information on the matter. Usually, I understand you of all the humans best, but this is something you do that I don’t understand—the way you think and think and think in circles, iterating the same questions with the same information and coming to the same lack of conclusion each time. You’re not accomplishing anything, you’re just upsetting yourself._

“So, what, I should just _stop_ thinking about it? I can’t!”

_Either make a decision with the information you have, or accept that you don’t have enough information and move on. You’re hurting yourself._

“Just like you should accept that they’re hiding something in your own brain from you and hurting you if you look for it?”

She makes a small noise and doesn’t answer. She does whir softly, though, her thinking sound, and Lambert feels bad for snapping.

He looks down at the paper smoothed out against his bunk again. _We all die._ Even Captain Lovelace, the only survivor of her mission, never made it back to Earth.

(Before he left Earth, his sister Rebecca had made him promise not to die in space, because Goddard Futuristics was The Man, an evil company that busted unions and underpaid their employees and bought politicians to keep the capitalist system unregulated and would probably kill him in space. He’d… well first he’d yelled, in exasperation, “Why can’t you ever just be _happy_ for me for once, Beck?” and she’d said “Because if you insist on going I don’t want you to _die in space,_ you idiot,” and he’d promised. He wondered who else had had similar conversations, before they left.)

Below square 3, square 4: _The video is real, and I do tell Captain Lovelace._

He picks up his pen, and draws three neat ??? in the box.

He hates the uncertainty. Hates not the not knowing, but the not being _able_ to know.

But Rhea’s right, and worse, he knows the decision he has to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Radicalization though the realization that AIs deserve rights!

**Author's Note:**

> Will update weekly on Fridays. Stay tuned!


End file.
